Jason Miller reports: About 80,000 employees of federal contractors are at risk of identity theft after a hacker broke into business research firm Deltek’s GovWin IQ system. In an email to vendors, which Federal News Radio obtained and was confirmed by Deltek, Mike Corkery, the company’s president and CEO, said it discovered on March 13…
Medical Privacy: Digital Technology Can Leave Your Health History Exposed
From EFF: The digitization of medical records is being pitched to the public as a way to revolutionize healthcare. But rapid technological innovation and lagging privacy laws are leaving patients – and their most sensitive information – vulnerable to exposure and abuse, especially in this age of “big data.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is…
Whitehat hacker goes too far, gets raided by FBI, tells all
Sean Gallagher reports on an interesting revelation concerning the second data breach at the University of Maryland: A whitehat hacker from the Baltimore suburbs went too far in his effort to drive home a point about a security vulnerability he reported to a client. Now he’s unemployed and telling all on reddit. David Helkowski was working…
Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines
Nicole Perlroth reports: They came in through the Chinese takeout menu. Unable to breach the computer network at a big oil company, hackers infected with malware the online menu of a Chinese restaurant that was popular with employees. When the workers browsed the menu, they inadvertently downloaded code that gave the attackers a foothold in…
Heartbleed Bug Endangers Medical Data, Internet as a Whole
So far, I’m not seeing much coverage of the Heartbleed bug and the security of patient information, although the Heartbleed crypto bug may be the biggest security news/threat of the year. Chris Wiltz writes: A bug has been discovered by security solutions provider Codenomicon Defensics and Google Security that would allow hackers to access a…
Update to VALIC databreach
Gene Valicenti has an update on the VALIC databreach reported previously on this blog. The breach generated a number of questions, including why it took so long for the life insurance and retirement plan firm to figure out what happened and why it took so long for them to determine who needed to be notified…